There are many disease states and abnormal conditions that cause defects in the skeleton. For instance, osteoporosis and other metabolic bone conditions weaken the bone structure and predispose the bone to fracture. If not treated, certain fractures and bone defects may progress and lead to the development of severe neurological or other medical complications.
Other examples of bone defects are those resulting from the excision of benign or malignant lesions of the skeleton. Proliferation of tumors often compromises the structural integrity of the bone structure and thus requires surgical stabilization and filling of the defects with biological materials such as bone grafts or cements.
One approach to treating many bone defects comprises injecting, packing, or filling the defect with biocompatible bone cement. Such bone cements are generally formulations of non-resorbable biocompatible polymers such as PMMA (polymethylmethacrylate), or resorbable calcium phosphate or calcium sulphate cements, which allow for the gradual replacement of the cement with living bone. Both types of bone cements have been used successfully in the treatment of bone defects secondary to compression fractures of the distal radius, the calcaneous, the tibial plateau, and the vertebral body.
Historically, however, most applications of bone cements have been limited to open procedures in which the surgeon injects, packs, or tamps the biological material under direct visualization of the defect margins. Although direct visualization maximally allows the surgeon to identify adjacent structures that may be compromised by the inadvertent placement or injection of cement, less invasive means (apparatus and techniques) to assist the surgeon in safely and effectively placing biocompatible cements are generally desirable.
For example, one debilitating condition for which less invasive means to treat with injectable cement would be desirable is osteoporotic compression fracture of the spine. More than 700,000 osteoporotic compression fractures of the vertebrae occur each year in the United States—primarily in the elderly female population. Until recently, treatment of such fractures was limited to conservative, non-operative therapies such as bed rest, bracing, and medications.
A relatively new procedure known as “vertebroplasty” was developed in the mid 1980's to address the inadequacy of conservative treatment for vertebral body fracture. This procedure involves injecting radio-opaque bone cement directly into the fracture void through a minimally invasive cannula or needle under fluoroscopic control. The cement is pressurized by a syringe or similar plunger mechanism, thus causing the cement to fill the void and penetrate the interstices of broken trabecular bone. Once cured, the cement stabilizes the fracture and reduces pain—usually dramatically and immediately.
One issue associated with vertebroplasty is containment of the cement within the margins of the defect. For instance, an osteoporotic compression fracture of the vertebral body may progress to an unstable intravertebral defect that is devoid of a cortical bone margin to contain the cement, and such a defect becomes an abnormal pseudo-joint that must be stabilized to progress to healing. Although the best alternative for treating such an intravertebral defect is the direct injection of bone cement into the defect to stabilize the vertebral body, there is a risk of cement flowing beyond the confines of the bone into the body cavity.
Yet another significant risk associated with vertebroplasty is the injection of cement directly into the venous system, since the veins within the vertebral body are larger than the tip of the needle used to inject the cement. A combination of injection pressure and inherent vascular pressure may cause unintended uptake of cement into the pulmonary vessel system, with potentially disastrous consequences including embolism to the lungs.
One technique which has gained popularity in recent years is a modified vertebroplasty technique in which a “balloon tamp” in inserted into the vertebral body via a cannula approach to expand or distract the fractured bone and create a void within the cancellous structure. Known tamps are inflated using pressurized fluid such as saline solution. The tamping effect, which may compact the cancellous vertebral bone to the extent it forms a barrier layer, is caused by the inflation of a balloon membrane that expands, thereby producing a radial force. When deflated and removed, the membrane leaves a void that is subsequently filled with bone cement. Creating a void within the cancellous bone by compacting the cancellous bone prior to injecting cement facilitates the use of larger filling cannulas and more viscous cement, which has been desirable because more viscous cement is less prone to unwanted or excessive cement flow.
There are, however, a number of limitations associated with such balloon tamp procedures. In particular, the balloon tamps currently known and used in the art may not produce sufficient forces to cause distraction. Partial healing of a chronic vertebral compression fracture places significant counterforce on the expanding membrane or container and limits the ability of the membrane or container to achieve full vertebral distraction, even while the patient is lying on the surgical table and the vertebral body is unloaded. Furthermore, as membranes are inflated with increasing pressure, radial forces are distributed equally and indiscriminately to all bone surfaces in contact with the membrane. The membrane then preferentially expands within the bone in a direction offering the least counterforce. In the vertebral body, this direction is lateral in the transverse plane. Since it is generally desirable to correct deformity in the saggital plane, distractive forces delivered by conventional expanding membranes may often prove to be ineffective. As a result, a large void is created which destroys most of the remaining intact trabecular bone and which requires a large volume of cement for complete fill. Since toxicity and clinical complication rates increase with increasing volume of cement injected, this large volume may have deleterious clinical effects or may limit the extent of treatment to adjacent fractured levels.
Moreover, the long-term rate of success for treatment by injection of bone cement or other filler material can be increased by interdigitation of the cement or other filler material with the surrounding cancellous tissue, since interdigitation prevents relative movement of fractured bone fragments and thus relieves pain. Balloon tamps, however, are known to compact cancellous tissue—even to the point of forming what has been referred to as a “barrier layer”—which unfortunately retards such beneficial interdigitation. Poor cement/bone interface strength has lead to post operative dislodgement or loosening of the cement bolus, requiring medical and surgical intervention.
According to another recent method for treating bone defects such as vertebral fractures, a flexible mesh bag or container—which by itself, i.e., prior to filling, is non-load-bearing—is inserted into the void that has been formed in the bone and filled with cement, bone chips, or other filler material. Upon filling, expansion of the bag can also cause undesirable compaction of the surrounding cancellous bone. Moreover, depending on the porosity or permeability (or lack thereof) of the bag or container, the bag or container may, by itself, partially or completely preclude any interdigitation of the cement or filler material with the surrounding cancellous tissue.
Therefore, although the development of vertebroplasty, balloon-tamping, and container-based treatments represented an advance over prior, direct visualization techniques for treating bone defects, there remains a need for better means to repair and stabilize unstable intravertebral body defects (particularly those that have advanced to cortical wall defects) and other bone defects.